by KE Payne
“Sure.” Pete hastened after her.
Freddie waited for Pete to fall into step with her before continuing down the path. “Thanks for giving up your lunch hour to come back here with me today, by the way.”
“Anytime.” Pete walked to the passenger side of Freddie’s car. “It wasn’t so bad after all, was it?”
“No.” Freddie looked back at the cottage. “Just…ugh. All so final.”
“As all break-ups have to be, sometimes.” Pete smiled.
“Mm.” Freddie gave one final, fleeting look towards her old front door, then opened her car. “Tell you what,” she said, “after the funeral and the wake, and only if we get the unpacking finished by seven over at the new place, I’ll treat us all to a Chinese. How’s that?”
“You got yourself a deal.”
*
The thin shaft of watery February sunshine cutting through the window of the small, stuffy offices of Parker, Flynn, and McKinlay Solicitors did little to lighten the gloom inside. It was eerily quiet. Only the muffled whirring of John Flynn’s computer as he studied the screen in front of him punctured the almost suffocating atmosphere inside the room.
Tag rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, thinking that she wouldn’t be able to bear the heat in the room a minute longer. To compensate against the bitter wind swirling around in the courtyard outside, the staff inside had chosen to crank the heating up to an almost unbearable level. Tag sank back into her chair and squeezed her eyes tight shut, lifting her hair away from her forehead in the vain hope that it might cool her down. She couldn’t bear to be holed up inside this stuffy, claustrophobic office when it was so bright outside. Breezy and fresh. The perfect day to pull on a fleece and go walking by a loch. Or go snowboarding. Or take a hike up into the mountains. All the things that a perfect, fresh day like today demanded.
Tag opened her eyes again, allowing them to rest briefly on the piece of paper on the table in front of her, then stared at the face of her father’s solicitor sitting opposite her. Surely this meeting couldn’t go on much longer, could it? All she had to do was sign a few official documents. How long did that have to take?
Much to Tag’s dismay, John started talking again.
“I trust your flight up to Scotland was okay?”
“Apart from a small child kicking the back of my seat throughout the entire flight, you mean?” Tag smiled. “It was okay, yes.”
“You caught the early morning shuttle up from Liverpool, is that right?”
Tag nodded. The move to Liverpool two years earlier had been the longest she’d stayed in one place since leaving her childhood home of Balfour nine years before. It wasn’t perfect, but the area in the city centre where she’d finally settled had afforded her what she’d desperately needed: a job, and with it, financial security. Add to that an apartment owned by her ex-girlfriend at a vastly reduced rent, and Tag was, for the first time in years, more than financially comfortable. Now, if what John had told her in their numerous phone conversations over the past few days was correct, both her financial security and her future were cemented.
Financially, Tag was content. Her future? That was a whole different ball game.
“So,” he said, as if reading her mind, “how do you feel about it? Now you’ve had time to think about it, I mean.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“Freaked.” Tag put one hand in her trouser pocket and rested the other, palm down, on the piece of paper, as if by doing so she might somehow make it magically disappear. “Totally and utterly freaked.”
If she didn’t know any better, Tag would have sworn her father had left her half of his business on purpose. Just to punish her for her past wrongdoings.
“There can’t be many young women of your age around who can say they’ve been given an opportunity such as this, Ms. Grainger—”
“Tag, please,” she said hastily. “Everyone calls me Tag. Ms. Grainger makes me sound like I’m a schoolteacher.” She looked down at her hand, still resting on the paper. “I understand what you’re saying,” she said, “but is there really no way I can wriggle out of this?”
“These are your father’s wishes—that the Balfour Watermill and Bakery remain in the Grainger name.” John picked up his piece of paper, identical to Tag’s. “That’s what he wanted. What you do with your share now it’s yours is up to you, but…”
“But if I sell it, he’ll come back and haunt me, is that what you mean?” Tag’s eyes rested on the words in front of her. The Last Will and Testament of Adam George Grainger. Her father’s will. And in it, a whole heap of trouble that she neither wanted nor needed.
Tag stared down at the table and said, half to herself, “I wonder what my brother thinks of this.” Finally she looked up.
“Blair’s signed for his inheritance.”
Just the sound of his name after so many years sounded weird to Tag. “You’ve seen him already?”
“His appointment was yesterday.” John shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “He requested an individual appointment, rather than—”
“Rather than having to be in the same room as me?” Tag finished John’s sentence. “Fair play to him.” She shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve been busting a gut to see him either. Even after nine years.”
Her words hung uneasily between them.
Nine years. A lifetime ago now.
Balfour Watermill and Bakery had been in the Grainger family since Queen Victoria’s reign. A thriving flour mill which had been passed down through the generations, it had grown from being a small, rural mill on the banks of a large, freshwater loch in Balfour, to being a tourist hotspot throughout the 1980s and 90s. Throughout Tag’s childhood, all she knew was a life up at the mill. It was all that four generations of Graingers had ever known in their lives too—until Tag grew up and realized that wasn’t what she wanted any more, that was.
“So now what?” Tag scribbled her signature across the paper in front of her and pushed it back to John. How hot did this room need to be, really? She reached down and picked up her bag, then stood up, desperate to get outside and fill her lungs with fresh air.
“I’ll get everything sent to you.” John looked at his screen.
“Send it to the mill.” Tag strung her bag across her shoulders. “You recommended a few weeks to get everything completely sorted, so I’ll be sticking around here for a bit.”
Tag had taken five weeks off in the end. She was due holiday—okay perhaps not five weeks—but she figured Anna owed her that at least. Especially when she took into account all the overtime she’d worked for her. Plus all the other favours over the years. And if Blair didn’t want to have anything to do with her once their father’s funeral was over, then she’d just take herself off. A tour of the Highlands would do her just fine; it had been too long since she’d just kicked back and rediscovered her homeland.
“You’ll meet your staff at the funeral, I’m sure.” John followed her to the door. “Then you’ll have suppliers, contractors—”
Tag stopped dead. “I have staff?” Her eyes went heavenward. This had to be a joke, right? “How many, uh, staff do I have?”
“Not many.” John couldn’t help but smile at the look on Tag’s face. “Most in the bakery. Then a couple in the mill, a few in the gift shop. Oh, and two in the cafe.” He opened the door for her. “They’ll be worried about their futures,” he said slowly. “It’s important you meet them sooner rather than later so you can put their minds at rest.”
His staff had always been so important to Adam. Treat your staff well, Tag, he used to say, and they’ll stick with you for life. Unlike parents do. They’d been a tight family unit for the first eight years of Tag’s life, the Graingers. Until one stormy night when her mother had gone out in the truck to the cash-and-carry for supplies and had never come home. It had all changed then. In the blink of an eye, the Graingers weren’t the close-knit family they’d always prided themselves on being. Adam had changed ov
ernight. A widower at forty-three, he’d retreated into himself, shutting Tag away when she needed him the most. That’s how it had seemed to a fourteen-year-old Tag, anyway.
“Once again, my condolences on the loss of your father.” An undertaker’s handshake. Clammy. “I hope the funeral goes well later.”
“Thank you.” Tag dropped John’s hand, resisting the urge to dry her palm down the leg of her trousers. “So do I.” She made to leave. “Although somehow I think my past is going to come hurtling back to me with a vengeance this afternoon.”
Chapter Four
Freddie grimaced as Skye arced higher and higher on the swing. Her heart was in her mouth as Skye kicked out her legs, straight as rods, and urged Freddie to push her higher still. She was fearless, a chip off the old block. Laura would be proud, Freddie thought sadly.
“Last push, okay?” Freddie said, ignoring the grumbles cascading down. “You’re quite high enough now.”
She came round to the front of the swing to watch Skye.
“Afterwards, can we watch TV?” Skye called down from her lofty height.
“I have to go out, remember?”
“Uncle Adam’s funeral?”
“Then when I get back, we said we’d make cookies, didn’t we,” Freddie called back. “Then finish unpacking the boxes from the old house.”
“Cookies!” Skye’s eyes widened. “I’d forgotten about them.” Freddie took a sharp intake of breath as Skye gripped the chain of the swing tighter and lunged over closer to her, grinning and tucking her legs up under the swing’s seat as she did so, to go faster again. “With chocolate chips like last time?”
“If you want.”
Skye leaned over further and beamed. Freddie knew that as far as Skye was concerned, chocolate-chip cookies were the best things ever. Especially because Freddie always let her lick out the bowl afterwards. She watched as Skye stretched her legs straight again, pointing her toes and tilting her head back to gaze up at the fusion of blue sky and white clouds as she swung back and forth. Freddie always put extra chocolate chips in too, always making sure Skye saw her do it. It was their little routine.
Freddie reached out slightly as Skye soared higher, her eyes closed. Her mind, Freddie knew, would still be full of the prospect of their home-made cookies. Sometimes they had white-chocolate chips, sometimes milk-chocolate chips, which was Skye’s preferred choice.
“Be careful!” Freddie sensed Skye’s concentration, now thoroughly distracted by thoughts of chocolate, wavering. She’d seen that look before: away in her own little world, unaware of everything and anyone else. Freddie grimaced as Skye teetered on her seat, flipping it up and tipping her out. When she landed in a heap on the grass, Skye let out a howl. Freddie was by her side in an instant.
“What happened?” She knelt beside Skye.
“Fell off.” Skye rubbed her arm and frowned at the swing as if, Freddie thought as she kept her eye on her, she held it personally responsible for her fall. “I hurt my arm.” She lifted her arm to Freddie.
“Let’s take a look, shall we?” Freddie kissed her hair.
Skye nodded and wiped away a tear, smearing mud across her cheek as she did so. Freddie gazed at her. Yes, just like her mother. Freddie’s chest tightened. It was times like this that the memory of Laura came back to her with such ferocity, it knocked the breath from her. Her sister had been just twenty-five when she’d died. The cancer diagnosis had been a shock to them all; no one in the immediate Metcalfe family had ever had so much as a cancer scare before, let alone anything worse. So when Laura found the lump, not one member of the family believed that it would take her from them less than two years later.
“Is it bleeding?” Skye twisted her arm round and tried to see her elbow.
“A bit. You’ve skinned it, that’s all.” Freddie pulled a hanky from her pocket. “Let me clean it.”
Everyone’s lives had changed when Laura died. Named as Skye’s legal guardian in Laura’s will, Freddie suddenly found her own life turned upside down, instantly being thrust into the role of mother whilst at the same time grieving for her sister. There was no one else to help her other than Charlotte. Skye’s father, a fellow student from Laura’s university course, hadn’t wanted to know when Laura fell pregnant. Last heard of backpacking around Thailand, never to be seen again. Freddie’s own parents owned a vineyard in Portugal, and while they begged Freddie to let them take responsibility for their granddaughter, Freddie wouldn’t hear of it. Laura, she told them, had entrusted her daughter to her, and she owed it to her sister’s memory to carry out her wishes. So her parents stayed in Portugal and visited Freddie and Skye every two months initially. Now that Freddie was settled into motherhood, their visits had tapered to a handful per year.
Not that Freddie minded. Once she’d got over the initial shock of being plunged head first into being a parent, she’d settled into the role as if she’d been doing it all her life. A guinea pig and hamster had been bought, so that Skye could concentrate her mind on something other than the loss of her mother. Paddington and Fudge had been so much more than a pair of hastily bought pets, though. They’d been a distraction, not only to Skye, but to Freddie as well. They were two living, breathing creatures that needed care, so that both Freddie and Skye could carry on living and breathing too. It had worked. Skye had blossomed into a thoughtful, caring child, and now Freddie couldn’t imagine her life without her. Skye was everything to her—daughter, companion, best friend—and Freddie loved her with a fierce protectiveness that she never thought she could ever be capable of.
“Ow.” Skye screwed up her face. “It’s stinging.” She drew her arm away from Freddie and cradled it protectively against her.
“I need to get the grass out, Skye.” Freddie held her hand out. “This is what happens if you insist on rolling your sleeves up all the time.”
Skye, chastised, offered a wary arm to her. Freddie dabbed at the red skin on her elbow, occasionally picking a blade of grass from it, sensing Skye watching her intently, sometimes frowning.
“Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.” Freddie wiped slowly.
“Do you remember when I fell off the wall and had to go to hospital?” Skye asked.
Freddie’s wiping slowed. The hospital story again. “Mm-hmm. I remember.”
“Charlotte’s hanky was pink,” Skye said. “Yours is white.” She pointed determinedly to Freddie’s hanky, in case Freddie wasn’t sure which hanky she was talking about. “Charlotte always had a pink hanky.”
“She did.” Freddie concentrated on Skye’s arm.
“Do you remember when she took me to hospital?”
“I do, yes.” Freddie remembered the phone call at the cafe. The blind initial panic at hearing Skye was in hospital until Charlotte had laughed and told her Skye was busy chattering to all the nurses and eating sweets.
“And afterwards she took me to McDonald’s,” Skye said. “And I had nuggets. I liked that.” She thought for a moment. “We never go to McDonald’s now. Not since Charlotte left.”
“No, we don’t.” Freddie studied Skye’s arm. Zone in. Don’t let Charlotte come back to you. Not again.
“Freddie?”
“Skye?”
“Why did Charlotte go?” Skye turned her arm over and inspected her injury. “Didn’t she love me?”
Freddie sat back on the grass. She drew her knees up and looped her arms round her legs. They had been through this so many times before, but still the same questions were asked. “She loved you very much,” she said. “I’ve told you that before.”
“I wish she hadn’t gone.”
“I wish she hadn’t either,” Freddie said. “But she went a long time ago now, and we just have to accept that she’s never coming back, don’t we?”
Freddie carried on wiping Skye’s elbow. With every wipe, Charlotte’s face returned to her, as clear in Freddie’s mind’s eye as the day she’d left. She could still hear her voice. Her laughter. Her last
words to her as she walked out of the door, never to return. I’m sorry. Freddie’s stomach curdled at the memory. Sorry? Was that it? Such an insipid word that couldn’t even begin to make up for all the hurt she’d caused.
They’d been together five years. Shared a house together for four of those. They would have married, too, Freddie was sure of that, if Sam hadn’t come on the scene and taken Charlotte away. Freddie’s jaw tightened. Sam should have stayed the fuck away from Charlotte and her family. But Charlotte should have been stronger too. She was as much to blame for their affair as Sam had been. Knowing that Charlotte shared parental responsibilities for a vulnerable child who’d not long lost her mother should have been enough for both of them to ignore their feelings for one another. Sam should have walked away. But she didn’t. The only time she did walk away, Charlotte walked with her, out of Freddie’s life, out of Skye’s life. And Freddie would never, ever forgive her for that.
“It’s better.” Skye’s voice pulled her back. “You can stop wiping now.” Skye carefully rolled her sleeve back down. “Can I go back on it?” She lifted her head backwards and motioned to the swing.
“I have to go get ready.” Freddie hauled herself to her feet. Charlotte slunk to the back of her mind once more.
“’K.” Skye clambered up too. “The swing was rubbish anyway.”
“Silly swing.” Freddie laughed and batted away a tear she hadn’t even known was there.
“Silly swing,” Skye echoed. “Can I watch TV while you get ready?”
“Under the blanket?” Freddie offered. “I think a girl with a poorly arm deserves a blanket at the very least, don’t you?”
Skye nodded sombrely.
They walked from the small play park, swaying their entwined hands backwards and forwards. Skye had been Freddie’s salvation after Charlotte had left. She’d clarified so many things for Freddie—the first being that Charlotte wasn’t worth all the tears she’d shed for her. After she’d recovered from Charlotte’s deception, Freddie had decided her own needs were less important than Skye’s and had made up her mind that from that day on, it would just be the two of them living a life entrenched in routine, stability, and more love than it was possible to give one child. Skye didn’t need anything else, and Freddie could give her all these things.
